The color of bravery
by Donroth
Summary: After the battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter walks through its halls.


I own nothing, JK Rowling does. Contains excerpts from Chapter 36 of the Deathly Hallows.

* * *

After a while, exhausted and drained, Harry found himself sitting on a bench beside Luna.

"I'd want some peace and quiet, if it were me," she said.

"I'd love some," he replied.

"I'll distract them all," she said. "Use your Cloak."

And before he could say a word she cried, "Oooh, look, a Blibbering Humdinger!" and pointed out of the window. Everyone who heard looked around, and Harry slid the Cloak up over himself, and got to his feet.

Now he could move through the Hall without interference. He felt he needed to clear his mind and found himself walking through the castle's battered halls, stepping over rubble and a few other corpses that had yet to be collected – thankfully of more death eaters and their allies, it seemed, than students he knew. But students, there were, nevertheless. Last night, in the darkness, you could hardly tell their houses, as red, blue, and even yellow, all looked black.

Stepping away from the teams who had come to collect the dead, Harry turned into another corridor leading out of the castle. That was when he saw them. Instinctively, Harry gripped his wand, but stilled, as he took in the sight. Never in all his years in Hogwarts had Harry seen them so – disheveled.

In the middle of the empty corridor, green and silver ties revealed in the daylight, Harper, a sixth year, was crumpled over the body of his housemate.

It was almost surreal finding him cradling her head, gently stroking away the silent tears that fell from the brusque rival seeker's face onto hers, streaks of white forming from under the grime. Well, Harry supposed, it was no more surreal than everything else that happened that evening past.

"We have to go," a tired, but urgent, voice reminds the bent figure. Harry looks above Harper's head and sees the elder Greengrass a few respectful paces back. Face and arms smeared with ash, wand hand reinforced by a makeshift bandage, grip frightfully tight as though the piece of wood were a lifeline.

Harper doesn't seem to hear her and it takes Zabini, who Harry didn't even notice was a bit to his side, handing him a conjured handkerchief – blackened finger prints marring the pristine linen – for him to acknowledge anything other than the pale, lifeless, body in his arms.

"Daphne's right. We have to go before we're seen," Zabini says, a huge gash disfiguring his face in a way Harry is sure the girls will still find handsome, his usual haughty voice uncharacteristically soft.

Harper shakes his head, suddenly reminding Harry of Dudley back when he was more pudgy than fat. Not that either Harper or Dudley were fat now.

"We have to rendezvous with the others. Else they'll count us as lost… or worse," Zabini reminds him, now crouched down beside his grieving housemate.

"He killed her, Blaise," Harper tells him, voice hollow, as he gently wipes his housemate's face with the cloth. "Her blood was pure, but her heart was weak, he said," he nearly whispers.

"And you killed him. All is settled," Zabini softly states, gesturing to a room, that Harry now saw was filled with a dozen or more corpses.

"His death doesn't bring her back, though, does it?" Harper murmurs.

Zabini softly shakes his head as Harper touches his lips to his housemate's forehead.

"Come, let me help you bring her out," Zabini tells him, moving to take the girl.

"No! I can do this on my own!" Harper cries as he stumbles up with her, oblivious to the lightening charm Greengrass had just cast on the body.

Zabini politely steps back and allows Harper to carry his burden away. Harry watches as Zabini and Greengrass close the rear, casting something he can't quite make out, which seems to shield them from anyone not already watching.

Off they went, through what seemed to be a large gap in Hogwarts' defenses. Alarmed, Harry realized that any death eater could have stepped through and flanked their forces last night, so easy as it was to overlook the secret trail that led from Hagrid's hut into the forbidden forest. It seems there were several vulnerable corridors that Hogwarts' defenders failed to man during the battle.

But it was over now and they were all safe, Harry thought. He headed back to the Great Hall mulling over the irony that the bravest people he's ever known weren't at all from Gryffindor.

...

Even years after, they say that Hogwarts itself protected its students on the night of The Great Battle. Many a death eater, it seems, found his or her end as several of the castle's own corridors unleashed its wrath upon them.


End file.
